Saturday, January 28, 2012

Well, there it sits. Taunting me. Don't be fooled by the little green blankie covering it up during the long intervals of non-use. The blankie is cat barf insurance. And when you have a cat that periodically barfs - wherever she happens to be - cat barf insurance is well worth the expense and trouble.

They say these things are easy to set up. Well... maybe if you are a very big and very strong man. It took myself and my husband and a set of those little teflon furniture-moving sliders to get it into the living room. Once there, the box was opened and we stood there, silently, mouths open, wondering what on earth to do next. Read the instructions, right?

Yeah. Right. Read the instructions. Bwahahahahahahaha!
Excuse me. But that was funny.

Lots of styrofoam - sheets - posts - blocks. And plastic sheeting. But wait! All was not lost. The box contained all the parts. ALL of them. Heck fire! I was ahead of the game already. And, and hour or so later, the thing was put together and I was on board with the safety key in hand. I've owned one of these things before so I know what to do with the safety key. Can't fool me. No sir.

I plugged in the safety key and pressed "START". Nothing. Ummmmmmmm. What the heck? Press "START" again. Nothing. Again. Damn! Did we hook it up wrong? No. Don't think so. Pretty sure we did everything just as directed by the .... Bwahahahahahahahah!.... instructions.

We look around. No on or off button. That's strange. What is this? An APPLE product? Steve Jobs have a hand in this design? ;o)

Search the console. No button. Look around look around. Aha! An on/off button - WAY down near the floor on the very front of the "thing." Flipped the button. Got back on the torture track part and pressed "START."

The belt began to move. I began to walk. Faster. Faster. RAMMING SPEED!

Now I'm in for it. Now I have no excuses anymore for not exercising.
My god. What have I done???

Friday, January 20, 2012

It doesn't often snow here in western Washington state. We have a very mild climate considering how far north we actually are. But for the past 3 or 4 days it has been snowing almost constantly. Soft, tiny, downy white flakes of snow. Once even big poofy flakes of snow.

This is the view out my living room window of my neighbor's house across the street. Do notice that I still have my "Happy Lights" up. My neighbor came over day before yesterday and asked if she and her kids could use my driveway to sled in the snow. Her driveway, as you can see, is not very steep and is pretty short to boot while mine....

As you can see, my driveway is steep (steeper than it looks in the photo) and long. It continues up and out of the range of the photo to the right for another good 30 feet, at least. Her 12-year-old daughter and her little brother (about 3 or 4) went sledding down the driveway the past couple of days - having a great time on their little plastic sleds.

The sleds are about the only color in the neighborhood right now - except....
Just take a look at what I saw a few minutes ago:

Isn't he just gorgeous?!!! Or...maybe it's a "she". I never can tell the difference with Jays.

Then, looking out the windows to the driveway side, I spotted this lovely thing:

And another paused from munching on my trees long enough to give her a good look:

There were two others just to the right of this girl. Two males with small antlers munching on my trees. Hard to find a decent meal in the snow:

Normally, I have a lovely view of the Olympic mountains from my living room windows, but today (and for the past several days) they have been hidden behind clouds. In fact, for a while I could not even see the land just there across the bay. Everything is white and gray:

But inside, all is snug and warm.

I hope you enjoyed the view from my windows this morning. We do have a Winter Wonderland out there. I, however, am staying inside.